Adieu, yearly mammogram; arrivederci, annual pap smear. 

Old news already.  And hot on the happy heels of last week’s startling revelations and 180 degree rotation of  medical testing recommendations, comes still another breakthrough way to shave medical care costs.

And we mean “breakthrough” in the literal sense.  Turns out Big Spender hospitals have been wasting scads of money, not to mention plaster of Paris and x-ray film, on broken bones that will, researchers now reveal, heal themselves!

“Broken bones can mend on their own,” says Dr. Riley Pumpernickel, head of the non-partisan Academy of  Orthopedic Surgeons Who Actually Care About The Unfairly Uninsured Dying In The Street.  “No doubt about it.”

“Sure, you can come in and waste time and money on costly x-rays that are all too often read more slowly than working your way through the pages of the first third of the health care bill,” says Dr. Pumpernickel.  “Or, you can just sit still for six to eight weeks and chances are your busted bone will be better than new. It may heal a little crooked, perhaps. And our studies show you may lose up to 25% of mobility in the limb. But that's a small price to pay for saving health care resources, isn't it?"

It turns out near-complete immobility works as well in treating most fractures as encasing the bone in a cast.  And ERs, freed up from dealing with all those broken bones, will have more time and space to spend on the illegal aliens who will be soon coming and who will really-we-mean-it absolutely not be eligible for free health care.

“Your greensticks, your obliques, transverse and comminuted; generally they all respond nicely to just sitting or lying down for a while; month and a half ought to do in most cases,” notes Dr. Pumpernickel, who adds that if you do have a jagged edge of bone coming through the skin, it’s “probably a compound fracture” and “you should consider making an appointment with a physician.” Or, in extreme cases, visit your local Scientologist.

Dr. Pumpernickel predicts that under this new suggested protocol, the average hospital will no longer be able to squander the hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical supplies for procedures that, according to him, “really don’t work any better than Doc Nature herself.”

Up next in medical news:  Pancreatic cancer:  Just a “poor state of mind?”